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Yunte Huang

Biography

Yunte Huang

Yunte Huang, a Guggenheim Fellow, has taught at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a professor of English. The author of DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, INSEPARABLE and the Edgar Award–winning biography CHARLIE CHAN, both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists, Huang speaks frequently about American popular culture. He lives in Santa Barbara.

Yunte Huang

Books by Yunte Huang

by Yunte Huang - Biography, Nonfiction

Born into the steam and starch of a Chinese laundry, Anna May Wong (1905–1961) emerged from turn-of-the-century Los Angeles to become Old Hollywood’s most famous Chinese American actress, a screen siren who captivated global audiences and signed her publicity photos --- with a touch of defiance --- “Orientally yours.” Now, more than a century after her birth, Yunte Huang narrates Wong’s tragic life story, retracing her journey from Chinatown to silent-era Hollywood, and from Weimar Berlin to decadent, prewar Shanghai, and capturing American television in its infancy. As Huang shows, Wong’s rendezvous with history features a remarkable parade of characters, including a smitten Walter Benjamin and (an equally smitten) Marlene Dietrich.